May 5th, 2010 by Margie

Dear Vegetable Husband Customer,

I hope you all had a wonderful May Day weekend or Derby Day, whichever holiday you chose to celebrate.  Today is another holiday for you, Cinco de Mayo; this is the holiday to recognize the Mexican army’s victory in the Battle of Puebla.  As a pacifist, I will just celebrate May Day for an entire week (smiles), but I did add cilantro to your basket for a little Mexican culinary delight this week.  It is going to flower this week at most of the farms so enjoy it while you have it.  Walker Farms have provided us with beautiful baby beets and greens.  You can cook these with your turnip greens or just juice them for a power-packed drink!

You also have baby fennel as a treat from Moonbeam Farms this week.  I have added a recipe using fennel on the website, but please share any that you might have with us this week.  Last week we enjoyed kohlrabi and many of you gave me your recipes for using it.  Thank you!  Moonbeam is the source of our cilantro and white turnips, too.  Be sure to eat the greens from these – they are incredible!  We also have strawberries – yeah!  We are in the thick of season for these wonderful candies of nature.  The ones we had a few weeks ago were from Miles Farm in middle GA.  Now, this week you are enjoying berries from Woodland Gardens just outside of Athens.  Next week we will harvest with Riverview Farms, an hour northeast of Atlanta.  See if you start to taste distinctions between the harvests that could either be the soil, the type of plants, or maybe the week they were harvested.  Below is your list of goodies for this week:

Heirloom Lettuces

Rainbow Chard

Baby beets with tops (some tops are purple and some green)

Bok choy

Fennel

Japanese white turnips with greens

Cilantro

Strawberries

I can’t write to you this week without acknowledging the horrible disaster we have with the oil spill in the Gulf.  I am collecting hair thru matteroftrust.org and they are making huge booms with natural hair to soak up oil.  Hope it works - please let us know if you hear of others ways that we as a community can help.   For now enjoy your healthy veggies and remember, I am always happy to talk food!

Gratefully,
Margie Thorpe